


put on a brave face

by blazeofglory



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst, Drug Addiction, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Overdosing, Reginald Hargreeves' A+ Parenting, Self-Harm, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-26
Updated: 2019-04-26
Packaged: 2020-01-31 22:38:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18600820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blazeofglory/pseuds/blazeofglory
Summary: Diego, Klaus, and Ben never exactly learned healthy coping mechanisms, but they deal with their traumas as best they can.There's solace to be found in pain, but it's easy to go too far.





	put on a brave face

**Author's Note:**

> TW: HEED THE TAGS. This fic is about self-harm and suicide. 
> 
> Title from "I Wanted So Badly to be Brave" by The Wonder Years.

02.

Diego is 17 when he kills a man for the first time. No one says anything of it, if anyone even notices-- after all, it’s not atypical for the Umbrella Academy to leave a slew of bodies in their wake. Ben was no stranger to murder, and Luther has certainly hit a few people too hard before, cracking their skulls on linoleum floor. They’ve all spent hours scrubbing blood from under their fingernails, even Allison and Klaus, who both hate to get their hands dirty. But Diego-- Diego had never killed a person before. He’s stabbed plenty, but he’s always known that they would get stitches and they would heal in prison, and he slept alright with that knowledge.

The night after his knife lodges into a man’s heart and the life bleeds out of him, Diego can’t sleep a wink. If he focuses, he can hear the sounds of cars on the street, someone running a shower down the hall, Allison and Luther’s hushed voices, and Klaus playing quiet music in his room. But he can’t focus on the noises, not when his blood is rushing in his ears and he’s struggling to catch his breath.

He killed a man today. His knife ended a life. He’s a murderer now and that’s never going to go away. He replays the fight in his head over and over, and he feels sick because he _knows_ that the man didn’t have to die. If Diego had curved his knife just a little more, that man would be fine now. Fuck, Diego doesn’t even know his _name_.

Diego knows that he’s spiraling into panic, but he hardly feels it at all. The guilt and the shame are fading and he feels terribly, horribly numb. He curls up in the fetal position in his bed, still wearing his stupid mask and his blood-stained boots, and he wonders if this is how Klaus feels when he gets high. Klaus always says that weed and booze make all the bad things go away, but it can’t feel like _this_ , because this numbness feels even worse than the pain.

He wonders if Ben felt like this, at the end.

With shaky hands, Diego pries the domino mask off his face and flings it across the room. His fingers curl into fists, his fingernails digging into the palms of his hand, and he barely even registers the sting of it. But it _does_ sting, and it gets worse when Diego tightens his fist.

It hurts. Dimly, Diego is aware that he’s still hyperventilating and he’s shaking and tears are falling steadily from his eyes, and he hasn’t cried like this since Ben, but he doesn’t linger on the thought. He focuses on the physical pain instead, the hot feeling of fresh blood welling up on his palms when he presses hard enough.

Diego closes his eyes and he sees the slack, pale face of the man he killed, and he chokes out a sob.

He has an idea now, though. On how to stop the pain, how to stop the numbness, how to focus on just _one_ thing, just _one_ feeling.

Diego kicks his boots off, heedless of the heavy thumps they make when they hit the floor. He fumbles at the zip of the ridiculous uniform that Dad makes them all wear, until he’s sitting in bed in just his boxers. His heart is still racing, but his breathing is finally slowing down, and he’s not afraid. He doesn’t feel sad or scared or _anything_.

It hurts to hold a knife, with the new little cuts on his palm. He holds it tighter than he needs to, hissing quietly in discomfort, and he takes a deep breath.

Slowly, Diego presses the tip of the blade to the skin of his thigh. He doesn’t know when he stopped crying, but he starts again when he presses _harder_ and breaks skin. He drags the blade in a straight line, and there’s so much _blood_ , and, and-- and Diego starts thinking about Ben again, starts remembering how much blood covered his body when they found him, how he’d almost been unrecognizable, how Diego had hoped for just one stupid second that this bloody body in Ben’s bedroom could possibly be someone else.

He carves line after line into his skin, until he forgets the man’s face and forgets kneeling in a pool of blood next to his dying brother, until all he can feel is pain.

It helps, if only for a few minutes.

 

04.  

Klaus has overdosed once before, when he was only 15. It was terrifying, waking up in the infirmary with Mom hovering over him, not knowing how he got there and why Dad was so angry. It had been an accident; he got too carried away at a party, ecstasy and vodka refusing to mix well inside him. He doesn’t even really remember the party at all, let alone remember taking any pills, but he guesses maybe he was roofied. There’s no way to know. Waking up to hear he almost died was scary enough to keep him sober for a long time afterward.

He still remembers Ben’s red-rimmed eyes when he snuck in after Dad finally stopped yelling at Klaus and left him alone.

“We were so worried,” Ben whispered, his arms wrapped tight around Klaus. They clung to each other. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

Two days after Ben dies, Klaus overdoses for the second time.

It’s not an accident.

He locks his bedroom door and wedges his desk chair under it to make sure no one can get in. He doubts anyone will even try-- they’re all subsumed by their grief, drawing farther apart from each other than they ever have before. When Five disappeared, it was hard. But when Ben dies, it’s devastating. There’s still hope for Five; he could be out there somewhere, happy far away from them, traveling time as he pleases. They all cling to the hope that he’s okay out there. But there’s no hope for Ben. He’s just _dead_. The funeral is in a few days.

It’s been two days and Klaus has spent every waking moment trying to summon Ben, but it isn’t _working_. It’s fucking _bullshit_ , this useless power of his. For the first time in his life, he actually wants to use it, but the one ghost in the world that he wants to see just won’t manifest. Ben is just _gone_ , and Klaus doesn’t know what the fuck to do. He thinks about going to Mom for some pre-programmed comfort. He thinks about going to Diego or Allison or Vanya, but he doesn’t know what he would say to them.

Instead of leaving his room to seek comfort that he probably wouldn’t be able to find anyway, Klaus makes sure the chair is secure under the doorknob. He takes the stolen bottle of vodka out from under his bed and he drinks until he feels sick. And when everything starts to spin, he takes the sleeping pills.

Then he drinks more, and he gags, but he makes himself keep going. He’s crying, but he doesn’t fucking care. Dad isn’t here to mock him for his tears. _Fuck_ Dad, he didn’t shed a single tear over Ben; Dad never loved Ben and he certainly doesn’t love Klaus or any of the others. Fuck him, fuck the fucking Umbrella Academy, this is all Dad’s fucking fault. _He_ did this to Ben.

Klaus takes a few more pills just to be sure that they’ll work.

By the time he passes out, Klaus can’t think a single coherent thought, and it’s such sweet relief to close his eyes and fall asleep.

When Klaus wakes, his head is _throbbing_ , the worst headache he’s ever fucking had, and it’s only getting worse by the second. He groans, rubbing tiredly at his eyes, and he suddenly realizes that someone is _yelling_. Startled, he sits up in bed, looking around wildly-- the sirens aren’t going off, the chair is still under the door, no one is coming to bother him.

Then between one blink and the next, Ben appears at the foot of his bed, still yelling Klaus’ name.

 

06.  

Ben doesn’t mean to do it.

He’s always been ill-suited for his powers and they all know it. He’s never been able to handle the pain and the carnage, the loss of control and the crippling fear every time he unleashes _them_. He _hates_ what Dad makes him do, he hates that he’s even capable of it, he hates that there’s no end in sight. The _thing_ inside him, it developed a taste for blood the first time Dad set him loose on unsuspecting bank robbers. Now, when they don’t get their violence and their blood, they get _restless_.

Ben feels when they grow frantic, squirming in his stomach, and he knows that all his siblings would be at risk if he accidentally let _them_ loose in the academy. He doesn’t think even Luther could hold him back. All the years of training and Ben _still_ can’t control them, and he knows that Dad is disappointed in him for it. He’s worked so hard to do his best, to be _strong_ , but it’s never been enough. It’s never _going_ to be enough.

When the monster grows hungry for blood, Ben gives it his own. He takes a razor blade to his forearms and his thighs, whenever _they_ get too hungry, and the ugly act of it seems to appease them for a time. Eventually, Ben doesn’t even cry anymore when the blade slices into his skin. He gets really good at cleaning bloodstains out of white sheets, and he always keeps his arms covered. It’s easy, considering both of their uniforms are long sleeved.

One week shy of their seventeenth birthday, Ben gets sloppy. He’s sitting on the floor in his bedroom, his back against the door, and his shaky hand slips on his wrist. He cuts deeper than he meant to, and it bleeds more than it should, and Ben knows he fucked up. It _hurts_ , it really hurts, and for just a second, he thinks about applying pressure to the wound to stem the bleeding. He thinks about calling for Mom.

He doesn’t.

It’s not so bad, really. He cuts himself again, just as deep, and he bites his lip hard to keep himself from crying out. He reaches up, fumbling at the door knob, fingers slick with blood, but he manages to get it locked. _They_ still aren’t happy. The cuts on his arms aren’t enough for them, the rapidly pooling blood isn’t enough for them, his barely restrained sobs aren’t enough for them.

So many long years training and Ben can’t control them in the end.

They burst free, and Ben barely holds back a scream. He should call for help, but he’d be luring his siblings into danger, and he just-- he can’t do that to them. The monster is hungry, desperate for violence, thirsty for blood, and Ben is the only living thing in the room for it to destroy. There’s so much _blood_ , so much pain, and he thinks that the monster is going to stop any second now. It’s taken its pound of flesh, it should _stop_ now, but it doesn’t stop.

Ben tries to scream, but he chokes on his own blood. He’s going to die, he’s going to die, he’s going to _die_ , and it doesn’t seem as peaceful as it had a few minutes ago. He’s terrified, suddenly and viscerally, and he doesn’t want to fucking die. He doesn’t know what’s happening, but his head is somehow jerked back, hitting the door _hard_.

Someone must hear the thump, because a second later, he hears Klaus’ voice outside his door. “Ben? What was that?”

“Are you okay?” he hears Diego ask, and then there’s an insistent knocking at his door.

When Ben tries to scream one last time, he finally succeeds, a primal yell wrenched from his throat.

By the time his brothers break down the door, Ben is laying in a pool of his own blood, and he distantly realizes that the monster has stopped moving too. It’s dying with him.

He closes his eyes one last time, and his breathing stops.

**Author's Note:**

> me: I love Ben so much, I want to protect him!!
> 
> also me: *writes two fics in which he dies screaming*
> 
>    
> Jokes aside, this was hard and sad to write, but I felt like I needed to write it. Please let me know if you liked it!


End file.
